


Another Odyssey

by ArchaeopteryxDreams



Series: Dragon stories [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: (briefly alluded to by the carnivorous dragon), Dragons, Fish out of Water, Gen, Harm to Animals, Humor, Interspecies Awkwardness, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams
Summary: In a modern world ruled by puny, frustrating humans, one dragon just wants cream to put in her coffee. (And a cow. She would also like a cow.)
Series: Dragon stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805434
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Another Odyssey

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published as part of an ebook short story collection in 2014, under another pen name.

Morning peels the sky apart. Awareness cleaves the dragon’s mind and she stirs. She goes to the back of the house and opens the screen door with a squeal of hinges — so that the day greets her, warm summer against her scales. A new day. Her roar reaches the heavens.

The phone rings: the neighbours express once again that they dislike the roaring.

But she is proud and unfettered, and she only snarls a little while setting the coffee maker. It vexes her as always, its beetle-small buttons defying her claws. But she brings it to life. The dragon sits over the steam-spouting device, its every drip a gathering treasure.

Realization spears her. She turns to the refrigerator, circling her bulk tight so her tail spines slide harmless over the cupboard doors. She opens the fridge and lo, a cold empty space meets her where the creamer ought to be.

The dragon growls. She hungers for a cow, a groaning, kicking piece of prey to sink her teeth into and, at some point before or afterward, get a little cream from. But she has fielded one phone call already today and the local farmers are troublesome when crossed.

She walks out into the summer light, screen door banging behind her. Wings unfurled, she takes to the sky, soaring free and also taking a crumb of delight in how her wingbeats bend the neighbours’ azaleas, the accursed things that are no use for eating.

The supermarket sprawls below like a grey mud flat, its parking lot not yet livid with the day’s heat. The dragon lands, mindful of her claws: cars hunker all around and they are dangerous yet fragile.

Flat human faces turn to her as she enters. The dragon stoops to pass through the door and then lifts her head magnificent, a vision of might as she chooses a plastic basket. One forepaw bent delicate around the basket’s handle, she walks past the stands of tropical fruits and leafy cow-food, her gait uneven but proud. The treasure she seeks lies farther inside.

Cold hangs ominous in the dairy aisle, the combined breath of a dozen silver fridge units. The dragon sits before one and rakes it with her eyes, and she snarls annoyed. Her brand is absent. Another cold, empty space meets her.

And so she stands considering the other milk cartons, those less desirable. Cold sinks its fangs through her scales; she despises it. She focuses on the many pictures and percentages behind the condensation-silvered glass.

Beside her, a human speaks its nasal, reedy tongue. Has the dragon tried those flavoured creamers? The pumpkin spice one is delicious!

The dragon snorts steam. The refrigerator door is fully white now, too marred to see through.

The human has been trying all the flavours, he shrieks. Figures he might as well treat himself in the morning! The pumpkin spice one is really good, though. The dragon should try it.

She yanks the door open and takes a carton that plies beneath her claws, full of a fat percentage she no longer cares about. She cannot leave the dairy aisle fast enough.

The cashier — a young female human with plastic baubles in her hair — is unfamiliar with the gold coins of a dragon's hoard. She turns the coin over and back again. She asks if it is real money.

The dragon growls.

Does the dragon have any other form of payment, the cashier asks? Maybe a credit card?

She misses the days when humans fled screaming before her.

After dealing with a rotund management human, she returns home. Uproots the damnable azaleas with an intentionally misplaced claw, and slams the door behind her, and puts down the creamer in its slightly crushed carton. The dragon turns to her coffee maker. The contents remain hot and they smell bitter as the ashes of a razed village, so she will need the most commonplace trove of this epoch: sugar.

She curls taloned fingers around the glass sugar shaker. She looks at it, and she snorts. Empty as well, this one. Devoid of the sugar she could have obtained from the store full of groceries — but she did not.

Hurling the screen door open, bellowing her ire, the dragon storms outside into the day. She takes flight. She hungers for a cow, so she will have one — and fates help the farmer who defies her.


End file.
